I don't know if I completely understood what was happening so sorry if this waay off base but I thought it was interesting how the ritual involves so many people who are also participating in the ritual and that the protagonist also doesn't know what the ritual is, implying to me that they've also been caught in the ritual loop.
"I want you to pretend that you know me and because you know me everything I do makes sense." Is a very intriguing line of dialogue! (It feels authoritative yet desperate...a bit romantic?) It's said by someone who might be the person who began the ritual or not since they say it's already in motion. So I'm thinking that like someone in authority might use the line to mean "Trust me, it'll all make sense why I'm making you do this at the end." but someone participating might use it (and I don't know if I'm explaining myself well here) as a draw?
A Draw: I was thinking about what your game desc says about loneliness and about what the hot sticker cowboy said about how the ritual is fun most of the time but sometimes scary. Everyone participating in the ritual seems to be alone most of the time unless another person participating comes along. None of them know what they're doing really but all of them help each other as best they can.
I don't have a conclusion, it just made me think~!!
Also 'Sick Bracelet!' and hot sticker cowboy are so cool~
No, upon further inspection here is my conclusion;
Maybe the TRUE ritual is the friends we made along the way!
AAAh Thank you for writing all of this! It rly made my day, I am resisting the urge to just infodump what the game is about to you, but if you are curious I can tell u more abt what I was thinking while making it.
A lot of ur interpretations aren’t that far off! and there are a few I hadn’t even considered that are really interesting, thank u for playing/completing the ritual !!